Trained Parrot BlogParrot Wizard Online Parrot Toy StoreThe Parrot Forum

Parrot toys? Feather plucking bird! :(

Bird rooms, aviaries, cages, foraging trees, play gyms, and stands. Discuss your parrot's locations and perches.

Parrot toys? Feather plucking bird! :(

Postby Edmcq198 » Mon Aug 10, 2015 10:15 am

I have an African grey parrot that is 9 years old..

Recently he has started plucking his feathers sadly. He had some toys in his cage but not many so I've gone on a haul and bought some boredom breakers including lots of rope and soft wood as I know he likes to chew these.

But how many toys is too many as I don't want to overcrowd my bird???

P.s. The bird is 9 but I haven't owned him for that long, so I'm fairly new to this.

Help appreciated.
Last edited by Edmcq198 on Mon Aug 10, 2015 11:31 am, edited 1 time in total.
Edmcq198
Parakeet
 
Gender: This parrot forum member is male
Posts: 3
Number of Birds Owned: 1
Types of Birds Owned: Timneh African grey
Flight: Yes

Re: how many parrot toys?

Postby Edmcq198 » Mon Aug 10, 2015 11:30 am

I should probably add that the cage is 3ft long, 3ft wide and about 5ft tall with a perch on the top aswell (unsure if cage dimensions will affect his boredom). and he's never locked in his cage and is free to fly around at all times.
Edmcq198
Parakeet
 
Gender: This parrot forum member is male
Posts: 3
Number of Birds Owned: 1
Types of Birds Owned: Timneh African grey
Flight: Yes

Re: Parrot toys? Feather plucking bird! :(

Postby Wolf » Mon Aug 10, 2015 12:44 pm

I think that we need to know about your birds daily routine starting with the time it gets up in the morning, what and when it eats what, what it does all day long, including how much interaction it has with you and how you interact when and what it has for dinner and when it goes to sleep, Also is this bird clipped or not. That should give us enough information to start to figure out what is going on. When was this birds last check up. I am thinking that it is not clipped as you said it was free to fly about.
Wolf
Macaw
 
Gender: This parrot forum member is male
Posts: 8679
Location: Lansing, NC
Number of Birds Owned: 6
Types of Birds Owned: Senegal
African Grey (CAG)
Yellow Naped Amazon
2Celestial Parrotlet
Budgie
Flight: Yes

Re: Parrot toys? Feather plucking bird! :(

Postby Edmcq198 » Mon Aug 10, 2015 1:42 pm

He gets up about 8 in the morning because I turn on the lights in the house and goes to sleep about 10 maybe earlier if he's tired. I feed him a small scoop of parrot mix but add in a few extra sunflower seeds because he loves these, I put some in a bowl and cover with wooden blocks which he has to route through to get to his food. And the rest in his foraging toys (however I feel asif he doesn't use the foraging toys as much because of the bowl) I also give him fruit and veg daily. He enjoys red grapes and soft carrots. He's never locked in his cage and is usually sat on his perch or on top of the cage. We have 4 dogs, these don't seem to be a problem he often climbs down to the floor and walks around with them (they don't bother him). The cage is next to a curtain so he often climbs around on that or sleeps behind it. I feel like he's territorial around his cage as he doesn't let me pick him up if he's on his cage instead he just tries to bite me... But if I lure him off the cage with a treat he steps up onto my hand and I can carry him on my shoulder anywhere (e.g. last night he said on my shoulder / legs for a good few hours whilst watching a film) I talk to him a lot and he's in the busiest section of the house between the kitchen and dining room. There are 7 people living in the house so he's never on his own. If he is on his own we put the radio on or TV ( he loves football and rugby and sings the chants when it's on Haha) I feel like he is happy as he sings a lot and knows a lot of vocabulary. He defiantly prefers me to anyone in the house and calls my name for attention. He doesn't like being scratched or touch at all but sits on me happily... If we are all sat in a different room being loud he often flies threw to join us so maybe he just wants more attention. He steps up and dances but I'd love to be able to teach him more but he's making it difficult by biting. He has a lot of toys in his cage with him and does pull on the rope and cardboard. He's been picking his feathers for a while now so maybe it's a habit and can't be broken????

Thanks for replying
Edmcq198
Parakeet
 
Gender: This parrot forum member is male
Posts: 3
Number of Birds Owned: 1
Types of Birds Owned: Timneh African grey
Flight: Yes

Re: Parrot toys? Feather plucking bird! :(

Postby Wolf » Mon Aug 10, 2015 6:35 pm

Unfortunately, I can say for certain that he is not happy, if he were happy then he would not be plucking his feathers out. This is not to say that he doesn't have periods of being happy, because he probably is happy part of the time. It is interesting to note that except in a few instances birds in the wild do not pluck and the few times that are known about, there was a medical issue causing it. Now that brings us to the point where we have to look for what the cause of this behavior is so that it can be changed and hopefully stop the plucking.

At this point, I have no response as to whether this may be a habit or not as in your first post you said that he recently started to pluck and in this last post you say that he has been plucking for a while, please elaborate on this so that I can understand what is happening here. We are creatures of habit as are all other animals that I have ever met or seen, we are slaves to our habits. In 60 years I have never seen anyone ever to eliminate a habit once it develops. The best that I have seen is the trading of one habit for another, so lets hope that this has not yet developed into a habit.

If your bird has not been to a vet in at least a year it would be a good idea to start off with a visit to the vet to rule out any medical cause for his plucking. The next thing is to evaluate his diet, for possible allergens such as soy and soy products, food dyes, artificial preservatives and artificial vitamins and minerals. as any or all of these could cause a bird to pluck.

Lighting that allows him to become hormonal at the wrong time of the year could also cause his plucking, especially when it is combined with a diet that is too high in fat, protein and starches.
Stress can be a cause of plucking and in your household, I am doubtful that he is plucking out of boredom, I think that stress is much more likely than boredom. One of the stresses that may be at work here is the amount of time that he gets to spend with and on you as he is very needy in this area and if he gets less than 2 or 3 hours out of cage time with and on you then he is probably feeling left out and alone and in need of more attention. I know that he is not a big touchy, feely type bird as I also have a Grey. It does not matter to your bird that all he does is sit there on your arm, hand or even shoulder, he just wants to be with you and a part of whatever it is that you are doing.

So these are some of the most common reasons for plucking. They give us at least some place to start. Even if lighting and diet are not the cause for your birds plucking this is still an area that you should look at as they are the major reason for a bird becoming hormonal along with petting the bird any place other than on its beak, head or neck. Here is what happens as well as some of its relationship to plucking behaviors.
Parrots are photoperiodic which is a big word that says that your birds breeding cycle is affected by light. Right in the center of the birds brain is a gland called the pituitary gland that responds to light and the bird gets this effect right through its skull as it is so thin. The bird also has an internal, biological clock which measures the length of the daylight and of the night. This clock is important because it helps to signal the pituitary gland that it is breeding season. This clock is set and reset by some very specific light that occurs at only two times of the day, once in the early morning, the twilight period just before the dawn and again in the late afternoon the twilight period that we refer to as dusk. So the bird needs exposure to the light that occurs at these times every day. When the internal clock is not in sync with the seasons the bird gets overly hormonal and that means that the bird is more aggressive than normal and prone to bite and are more territorial than usual. Also the bird may be in physical pain it this has gone on long enough as the birds internal sexual organs grow out of proportion and this causes pressure on then as well as other internal organs such as the heart and air sacs, liver and so on. These sexual organs can grow to more than 100 times their normal size, so if you think about that just a little bit I am sure that you can easily understand how painful this can be. This pain can lead to feather plucking as well as self mutilation as the bird tries to relieve the pressure and pain caused by this condition. It also leads to frequent biting as the pain becomes great enough that the bird can't stand to be touched.

Whereas the light schedule signals the body to produce these hormones and start the reproductive cycle or to end this cycle and start the molting or other cycle, the diet provides the raw materials to produce the hormones, that is done through the amount of protein and fat in the diet. If the diet is too high in protein or fat then the birds body produces too many hormones and can remain in the breeding cycle despite the fact that the signals from the internal clock say that this cycle needs to end. This means that your bird needs a diet that is low in fat, protein and starches in order to not become overly hormonal and aggressive.

As you can see parrots are complicated and this is even moreso when the cause of a behavior is affected by so many things. One really must look at the entire bird and its environment to figure the cause as well as the remedy.
Wolf
Macaw
 
Gender: This parrot forum member is male
Posts: 8679
Location: Lansing, NC
Number of Birds Owned: 6
Types of Birds Owned: Senegal
African Grey (CAG)
Yellow Naped Amazon
2Celestial Parrotlet
Budgie
Flight: Yes

Re: Parrot toys? Feather plucking bird! :(

Postby Pajarita » Tue Aug 11, 2015 9:31 am

Wolf gave you the long explanation, now I will give you the short of it (and you might not like it).

You have him on a human light schedule and a high protein diet and if this has been done for a long time, he has to be overly hormonal (which translates into sexual frustration and actual constant pain). They need to be kept at a solar schedule with full exposure to dawn and dusk and cannot be free-fed high protein food, regardless of whether this food is presented as part of a foraging activity.

Grays don't do well in busy households or where there are too many people around them, they like quiet households and belonging to a single person with no 'competition' for their attention or love. They are naturally high-strung and one-person birds so anything that deviates from this is not what one would call ideal for them.

He is at the age when what people call 'behavioral problems' arise. People think that plucking, barbering, self-mutilating, screaming, biting are 'behavioral' problems but, in reality, they are nothing but problems brought on by captivity and, usually, an inadequate husbandry. The thing is that parrots are really very, very patient and even when conditions are not good, they try their very best to adjust and wait and wait and wait for things to get better but, it reaches a point in their lives that they realize that what they are currently getting is what they will always get and that's when they start 'acting up'. In large species usually happens from 7 to 10 years of age, depending on the conditions and the individual.

Toys are not going to make any difference whatsoever. You need to put him on a solar schedule, improve on his diet (do you give him any multivitamin/mineral supplement?) and put him in a spot where there is not that much human hullabaloo plus make him your bird, not a bird that belongs to everybody equally because that doesn't work out for grays. You also don't mention whether he is clipped although it sounds to me that he either is or was for a long time because you don't say anything about him flying anywhere...
Pajarita
Norwegian Blue
 
Gender: This parrot forum member is female
Posts: 18701
Location: NW Pa
Number of Birds Owned: 30
Types of Birds Owned: RoseBreasted too, CAG, DoubleYellowHead Amazon, BlueFront Amazon, YellowNape Amazon, Senegal, African Redbelly, Quaker, Sun Conure, Nanday, BlackCap Caique, WhiteBelly Caique, PeachFace lovebird, budgies,
Flight: Yes


Return to Housing

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 14 guests

Parrot ForumArticles IndexTraining Step UpParrot Training BlogPoicephalus Parrot InformationParrot Wizard Store